


Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by HiddenLacuna



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Immediate Canon Divergence, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Magical Realism, Unreliable Narrator, the woods - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:43:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenLacuna/pseuds/HiddenLacuna
Summary: I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living.  - Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in ScarletUpon consideration, as both choices before me were likely to require a similar amount of discomfort, I chose the former alternative. - HiddenLacuna





	Lovely, Dark, and Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [billiethepoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/billiethepoet/gifts), [mydwynter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydwynter/gifts).



> Prompt: "A Walk In the Woods" for the Come At Once challenge, Round 8, spring/summer 2018
> 
> Betaed with great kindness and brilliance by billiethepoet and Mydwynter. Thank you both - you are most excellent.

JHW, June 10, 18-

I begin this journal with a mixture of anticipation and dread, as I expect it shall serve as my only company in the coming years. Although I am certainly much inclined toward solitude after all that I have seen, and - I shall be fully plain since this journal shall be seen my none by mine own eyes - suffered during my years of service in the King’s regiments. 

These recent years of travel and war have taken their toll on me, not only in my body, which has suffered much of late since convalescing from my long enteric fever, but also, I fear, in my mind. I know that my fall from my former self is writ meanly in my countenance, for upon my arrival in London I was scarcely returned for a fortnight before one old and distant friend, whom I had chanced to meet upon the streets, remarked upon how wasted and changed I was. I could find no rooms suitable for my liking or pension; I had neither kith nor kin upon whose charity I could impose. I realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Upon consideration, as both choices before me were likely to require a similar amount of discomfort, I chose the former alternative. 

There are few places in England where a soldier's pension will permit one to live in as much comfort as a man can hope for, so I have returned to Scotland, where the land is wilder but the livings are to be secured far more affordably. I expect that this cottage, deep in the Gramalchladdich Wood, will sustain me as well as can be hoped. The solicitor implied that it was a family’s living not fifty years ago, but it is most inconveniently located now that the nearby road is no longer in favour with the tradesmen and requires at least a day’s journey by foot over overgrown paths reclaimed by Nature. 

No matter - I am able to afford the property, and I intend to live out my days here in quiet and peace. I have procured seeds for planting; I have a number of books on the subjects of botany, wild animal husbandry, garden sustenance, and lowland fishing. There is a brook not half a mile from the cottage, where trout are abundant; the woods around me shall provide me with shade in the summer and shelter in winter. I am resolved to be content. 

When I first laid eyes on the property, I saw how much it had fallen into disrepair. The east wall has begun to crumble and there are birds nesting in the roof. However, the central room is sturdy and not draughty, the fire warms the room quickly, and I have more than enough space for myself and the few possessions I have brought. There is a bed and a table and a hearth for cooking. Perhaps some day I may acquire a dog for companionship, but I am not inclined to consign an innocent creature to the existence I have chosen. I am to be a man removed unto himself, with as little human contact as may be hoped for. 

\---

JHW, June 13

My first task, after ensuring that the well remains sweet, is to clear away enough of the encroaching brush and saplings as have taken root in what was plainly at one time a sizeable vegetable garden. The earth is good, fertile and black, and once the crust has been broken it turns with, if not ease, at least not impossibility. There are few stones to hinder my progress. I hope that I will have more clement weather before the next rains begin. 

\---

JHW, June 24

Planting for the autumn harvest has begun. I am consuming my stores more quickly than I had expected. I fall asleep exhausted each night, then rise again in the morning to begin anew. My hands a blister & sore I cnt writ

\---

JHW, Ju

\---

JHW, July 15

Rain, rain, more rain. Blast it all. I spend my time in fishing, collecting firewood, the business of keeping myself fed. Winter will be coming soon, and I think of it often. 

\---

JHW, July 26

The crops are growing well, and the fish and rabbits and berries of the wood sustain me. I pore over the herbal handbook in the afternoons. I have not seen another soul. The last of the spirits I brought with me have run off - and probably for the best, as I no longer have the luxury to recover for a morning or day. 

\---

JHW, August 1

It is to my great relief that my body appears to have taken to the lonely rustic life - my strength is quite returning to me, and I am much improved in form again. I have lost none of my tan - being out of doors every day has kept my skin as brown as a nut, although I flatter myself that I have far outgrown Mr Stamford’s simile to a lathe. And this despite the somewhat dire remainder of my preserved stores. Life in the wilderness is as restorative and constitutional as could ever have been hoped. 

\---

JHW, August 6

I have found a charming glade, perhaps two mile or so from the cottage. 

I might never have found the place, had I not been practicing the lining of bees. I was following a fat and dolorous little fellow from the wild roses near the cottage - where there are bees, there must be a hive, and perhaps in time honey. I clambered over logs and gorse in pursuit until my lame leg was quite shaking with exhaustion. Sliding down the banks of a small valley, I spent more time in watching my feet than in watching my quarry. The bee was nowhere to be seen. I had lost the creature, to my great disappointment. I had decided to give up the endeavour, when I heard another go purring past my ear, heading decisively to the left of the direction to which I had until recently been oriented. 

I glimpsed a brighter green through the trees than I had ever seen in this country. It reminded me of the grass in front of a palace, thick and well-kept and greener than the finest emeralds in the crown. In the months since I have been in occupation of the cottage, I have found no other place or colour like it. During my foraging rambles, I have found wild places and stoney outcroppings and high heathered hills and dank swamps and open fields, but nothing that I would have considered pleasant. I cannot help but wonder what happy combination of elements have led to the growth of such a singular environment. 

The glade is covered in a thick, dark moss as springlike and welcoming as a woolen mattress. There runs a small brook that babbles and glitters most pleasantly, culminating in a plunging cascade along the northern boundary. It is ringed by the dark and twisted pine trees that make up the woods in this area, but they are curiously excluded from the mossy glade. 

At the centre of the glade there is a magnificent birch tree. It is not the tallest tree I have ever encountered, but its slender grace sets it apart and makes it quite extraordinary. The bark is of a smooth, creamy hue, and it boasts a glorious crown of foliage which gives shade to the mosses and occasional ferns of the glade. I have never seen a cultured English, French, or Indian garden with as much striking beauty as this wild place, even though it has quite obviously not been visited nor curated by man in decades, perhaps longer. 

The bees have indeed made their home within this glade, in a lighting-cracked tree just within the green-carpeted area. The hive appears to my eye to be quite massive, and while I at first was apprehensive of making the bees uneasy enough to set upon their human intruder, they have thus far paid me no mind. I shall mark the spot and return once I have read up a little more on the harvesting of honey from a wild hive. 

\---

JHW, August 11

The cottage’s garden continues to produce well and I am beginning to harvest those vegetables which have ripened nicely, and which the deer and rabbits have not destroyed. I have created a perimeter of gorse and snares which appear to be a satisfactory deterrent. I have rebuilt the east wall of the cottage enough that the wind no longer howls through the gaps in the stone, though a strong rain will likely undo all my hard work. 

I find that as my daily tasks consume less of my waking hours, I am choosing to spend more time in the little glade that I have begun to think of as peculiarly mine. The air seems strangely more peaceful there, and I am able to rest with no ill dreams to jolt me from sleep. The birch rustles above me when I am restless as though there were a secret zephyr playing only with its lovely branches. The susurrating leaves bring quiet to my mind like nothing else I can recall in this life. At other times, however, the tree is silent and still, and no birds sing within its boughs, nor for miles around. 

\----

JHW, August 17

Something about the isolation and privacy of the glade has brought me, to my great surprise as it is not my usual custom, to take myself lazily in hand, and thus while away the warm summer’s afternoon in the pursuit of that most intimate of diversions. I have divested myself of my seed at the base of the birch tree on more than one occasion. I have found an incomparable relaxation in pursuit of crisis there that cannot be replicated in the cottage or elsewhere in the woods, much to my surprise. Surely, the bodily parts are the same regardless of location, and I am certain I employ the same techniques no matter where I may have transported myself. Perhaps it has something to do with the resonance of the bees, or the scent of the deep loam and verdant mosses. 

\---

JHW, August 21

I have just awoken from a night of waking dreams such as I have never experienced, not even when I was a young lad and visited often by nocturnal visions of tempting images. I recall then that my nightly spectres had taken a variety of physical form, some impossible to mention at the time, even among my schoolboy chums. I had thought that I had outgrown the mental weaknesses which showed me such incubi. But my sleep last night was troubled by such images as seemed most real, as real as the table, book, and pen I see before me now.

If I ever return to the bosom of civilisation, I shall burn this journal.

I dreamt that I had been fast asleep in the still summer heat of the cottage, and I suppose I must have previously been dreaming of sunny afternoons in the green glade, for I recall seeming to start awake at the sound of the rustling leaves of the proud birch. The rustling seemed louder and closer than usual, as though I were perched amongst the topmost branches like a squirrel. The smell of moss and earth and bark filled my nostrils and I breathed deeply, it having become the dearest scent in the world to me. 

In the semi-darkness, it seemed as though I saw a man standing in the centre of the room, quite still, but certainly intently watching me as I dreamt in the bed. I sensed no malice or evil intent from the apparition, nor was my dreaming brain concerned enough to question whether the intruder be man or spirit. By the light of the banked fire I discerned that he was tall, thin but with a muscular sturdiness about him. His hair was as wild as a sheep’s coat. His skin was of a pallor which caused him to appear to glow like snow in moonlight. He was entirely without clothing, but stood as though completely unashamed, bold as a Greek statue. I found myself noticing that his feet and legs were neither damaged nor covered in dirt, as I would expect a corporeal intruder’s to be had such a man walked nude through the forest, and I relaxed further into the dream, quite unconcerned. 

The man approached the bed with a willowy grace until he was standing near enough to reach out and touch. He stood there, looking down upon me with eyes the colour of April leaves, for some time, I do not know how long. I licked my lips to speak. “Sir, what…” I began, intending to ask him his business in the cottage, but he interrupted me with a long sibilant shhhh, bringing a paper-cool finger to my lips. I thought I heard the rustling of gentle leaves again, and was calm. 

I recall him leaning down to peer at me as though I were a rare and unusual specimen. I had no thought of my own high summer’s lack of modesty, and indeed my cockstand was showing an unseemly interest in the examination. In dreams, we are unbound from ourselves. He drew his fingers slowly across my exposed chest, pushing through the tight coils of hair across my torso and down to where I was more closely thatched. 

I shivered at his touch. My member twitched and strained towards the hand now trailing its way back up my chest. The man did not seem to notice my poor prick, so entranced was he in the way my hair moved out of the way at the run of his fingers, then sprang back. He stopped to explore a nipple and I groaned deeply. His eyes snapped to my face, and I was again transported to my most restless of times in my emerald paradise, the wind whispering softly to me through the treetops. 

I reached out to run my hand up the pale, cream-like thigh, and the muscles beneath were as hard and strong as oak. His own prick was pale and unremarkable, except for its perfection. I thought again of Greek statues, of their sexless virility and of their powerful immobility. 

I dreamt I caught his pale, cool hand in mine, and drew it down to rest on the bed beside me. I tangled my hand into the felted disarray of his hair and pulled his mouth down to meet mine. 

I do not recall every particular of the dream. I remember the taste of grass, and mushrooms, and summer. I remember a vivid moment of finding myself with my nose pressed to the inner joining of his thigh, himself entirely buried in my throat to the very root, just as I was in turn in his mouth. I remember tongues, slippery-wet and tasting of silt and sky. I remember wool under my fingers and the feeling of fine paper as I gripped the globes of his arse. I do not remember any words spoken between us, nor of any moment of departure. I remember only pleasure and the sensation of strength and life flowing into me. I slept deeply and well at long last. 

I awoke with impressions of having felt embraced, enveloped, loved. There was no sign of anyone having been in the cottage, nor of any forcing of my door-latch. I was, as I have been these many months, alone. 

I cannot explain the profound stillness in which I find myself this morning. I have wasted half the day in recording dreams. And yet, I dread the loss of even the fragmented memories which I do retain, and so have resolved to record as much as I may, so that I may think on this in the days to come. 

\---

JHW, September 16

I pause often to think of that dream. I dream often these days, it seems. Sometimes I am not certain of where the border is between dreaming and awake. I step into a dream as easily as I step into my glade. 

I have not taken in the harvest.

\---

JHW, September 20

He says that I must. He speaks to me in harsh secrets and beautiful truths. He tells me the difficult things I must do, that we might be as one. 

\---

JHW, October 4

It is getting colder, and I must go. How can I? 

How will I. 

\---

JHW, November 12

I have packed up that which I would be distressed to lose to the elements, and will be travelling now to the nearby city of ---- to spend the winter. I intend to work as a physician or barber, or, failing that, a labourer or porter. My body is strong as it ever was - stronger, perhaps - and I am willing to seek my fortune for a time amongst the towns nearby. I will leave this journal well hidden in my cottage. I can no longer bear to think of burning it. 

I will write to the Royal Bank in London to forward the installments of my pension which have gone unclaimed. With the funds I shall receive in the towns over the winter months, I shall purchase provisions for better rebuilding and fully settling into my cottage next year. 

I intend to return in the early year, fully prepared to make my permanent home in my cottage in the woods, just as soon as the first sap of spring begins to flow.


End file.
